What's your favorite lyric from a song?

" This shirt is old and faded
all the color's washed away
I've had it now for more damn years
that I can count anyway
I wear it beneath my jacket
with the collar turned up high
so old I should replace it
but I'm not about to try

This shirt's got silver buttons
and a place upon the sleeve
where I use to set my heart up
right there where anyone could see
this shirt is the one I wore
to every boring high school dance
where the boys ignored the girls
and we all pretended to like the band

This shirt was a pillow for my head
on a train through Italy
this shirt was a blanket beneath my love
we made in Argeles
this shirt was lost for three whole days
in a town near Buffalo
till I found the locker key
in a downtown Trailways bus depot

This shirt was the one I lent you
and when you gave it back
it had a rip inside the sleeve
where you rolled your cigarettes
It was the place I put my heart
now look where you put a tear
I forgave your thoughtlessness
but not the boy who put it there

This shirt was the place your cat
decided to give birth to five
and we stayed up all night watching
and we wept when the last one died
this shirt is just an old faded piece
of cotton
shining like the memories
inside those silver buttons

And this shirt is a grand old relic
with a grand old history
I wear it now for Sunday chores
cleaning house and raking leaves
I wear it beneath my jacket
with the collar turned up high
so old I should replace it
but I'm not about to try"

Mary Chapin Carpenter  "This Shirt"

Feels like it's time for a couple of deep lines from Dylan. The first from Subterranean Homesick Blues,

"Don't follow leaders, watch the parkin' meters"


and a tricky one from It's Alright, Ma 


"Proves to warn that he not busy being born
Is busy dying"



The following lyric from Blonde on Blonde eventually lead me into reading the Steinbeck novel. 

"With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go,"


Unfortunately, great book that it is, my memory of it is not 'sheet metal'. Far from it. Maybe time to revisit it this summer.

“Happened back in the bayou many years ago
Satan came to take him and he did it real slow
Well, they rushed him back to see the doctor
The doctor just shook his head
Twenty years of rotgut whiskey
Done killed this poor man dead
He drank ole poison whiskey
'Til it killed him dead”

“Poison Whisky” Lynyrd Skynyrd 

Hello Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason...

She had rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes.
And I knew without asking she was into the blues.